1. Field
Conveyor belts are used in many industries such as for transporting sand, gravel and the like in mining, loading, unloading, and other operations. The belts may be from several feet to miles in length. All such heavy duty conveyor belts from time to time need to be spliced for repair, or a splice remade or damage otherwise repaired, or for other reasons such as planned scheduled maintenance. This requires some way to clamp the belt to prevent tension separation of the splice or repair ends while the belt is under very large tension forces, e.g., several hundred pounds to several tons.
2. Prior Art
There are more conveyor belts in the twenty to one thousand foot lengths than any other lengths and there is a need for light weight, easy to use belt clamps for these lengths of belt. Many types of clamps are on the market ranging in design from wooden boards bolted across the belt on opposite sides of the repair site to complex cam rollers that tighten as they are pulled. All of these prior belt clamps put pressure and direct tension on the belt edges and often start a tear in the belt edge since starting a tear from the edge of the belt is the easiest to do. In this regard, even though the center portions of the belt width are also gripped by the clamp, it is the edge portions which are the most fragile and which fail first under the heavy belt tension forces required during belt splicing or other belt repair.